L'inchiesta dell'ispettore Morgan

This is basically a mystery story, but the mystery itself and its solution are not very satisfying. The best is that in the mean time we get to see some character study. And Losey's mise-en-scene is above average, as usual.

It can sometimes be interesting to study the early work of directors who were later to emerge as important figures in cinema. Some show little indication of what is to come (Carol Reed's "Bank Holiday " for instance) while with others the fingerprints are all there (Hitchcock's "The Lodger" and David Lynch's "Eraserhead"). Joseph Losey falls somewhere between these two extremes. An early work such as "Blind Date" has a competence and clearheaded sense of narrative flow that place it on a higher level than most B-style thrillers to emerge from British studios in the '50's but there is little of the original stamp that was to mark his later work such as "The Servant", "The Go-between" and "Accident". These films provide fascinating commentaries that an outsider from the USA brought to bear on the British class system. There is a little in "Blind Date" about the social hierarchy within the British police force, but this is peripheral to Losey's main task of presenting a neat little thriller well. He keeps the tension going nicely to begin with, with a young Dutch artist visiting a flat where he expects to find a woman he has been having a liaison with, only to find himself soon embroiled with the police. The script has a neat way of evading what is going on until some way into the film. Some of the flashbacks go on for rather too long and are somewhat weakened by a rather wooden performance by Micheline Presle as the woman of mystery. Hardy Kruger, on the other hand, as the young Dutchman is excellent. We really identify with his frustration at finding himself in a situation that is beyond his comprehension and control. As the main detective Stanley Baker plays cat and mouse with his customary skill. "Blind Date" is in so sense an important or significant film, but the fact that it was competently made by a director who was later to produce some outstanding works of British cinema makes it worth a look. There are two other good reasons for watching - photography by Christopher Challis and music by Richard Rodney Bennett - both considerable artists in their respective fields.

An excellent Stanley Baker in full Welsh-accented flow as the idiosyncratic DI David Evan Morgan unravelling the murder of a French woman at her oddly gaudy London flat. Baker keeps an unconventionally close rein on Hardy Kruger, who maintains his innocence whilst withholding enough information to keep the inspector interested in his relationship with the dead woman. Being found at the murder scene doesn't help the young Dutchman's situation. Some flashbacks give us the background to the tensions between the struggling artist and his muse. Downing a considerable quantity of milk (peptic ulcers were the cause of the commonest surgical operation in the late 1950s - fewer cigarillos would help Stanley) Morgan has to juggle his quest for the truth with the usual insistence from above that a top level government minister is not to be embarrassed by the outcome.

Joseph Losey was the USA's loss and the UK's gain. He was a great director because he took chances on subject matter, and he made excellent films as well as disappointing ones. All original director's do, and ' Blind Date ' is in my opinion one of his best. Hardy Kruger playing a young Dutch artist ( brilliant acting ) meets up with a very beautiful Micheline Presle, and a murder opens the film and Kruger arrives at the right place at the wrong time. The place is ( probably ) set in Chelsea, London and I have a hunch Losey liked Chelsea as he set the famous film of his ' The Servant ' there. Cat and mouse games happen in that film, and they happen too in ' Blind Date. ' Kruger is suspected of murder and Stanley Baker plays an over aggressive policeman and a lot of the film is a game of entrapment and a rapid confession. Between these scenes we go back in time to the murder victim, played by Presle at her very best, and without explicit sex the film exudes eroticism. A lot of the visuals that Losey seemed to like a lot; mirrors, cluttered interiors etc are all there, and made as it was in 1959 it equalled any film made by Louis Malle or Claude Chabrol in France. But Losey was his own man, and as well as leaving the USA he brought over with him shades of nightmares that are there in ' M ' and in ' The Big Night. ' I give no spoilers about the end only that the last words said by Presle ( and in passion ) will resonate in my mind for a long time. This is no minor work of Losey and it should be rated far higher than it is. I dare to use that overused word masterpiece again, and it is my personal favourite of his films as it shows just how close love is to dislike, indifference and betrayal. Watch it on the UK's Talking Pictures, or on YouTube or be generous and buy it. If you own it I bet you will want to see it much more than once to catch the fine dialogue, superb acting and a London that was once achingly beautiful.

The plot is pretty conventional Scotland Yard potboiler; Hardy Kruger suspected of a murder he didn't commit but the evidence looks bad. But the surprise of the film is a brilliant performance by Stanley Baker as the Police Inspector Morgan doing the investigation. Baker grew up in Wales near the home of the more famous Richard Burton, but he was every bit as good as an actor. His performance is tightly wound, with shafts of anger about the special treatment he is asked to give an upper class alternative suspect. Very different from the laid-back aristocrats that many films imagine populate the British police. It's a bit stagey and you won't find any of the car chases which litter so many police films. But the supporting cast are all good and Baker is a joy to watch.